By MELISSA HOPPERT

May 3, 2013

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With an advertisement in a Pittsburgh newspaper — “a willing boy wishes work” — Henry Phipps Jr. entered the world of 19th-century industry and set out on a career that epitomized the American dream.

The son of a cobbler, he became a wealthy businessman, a friend and colleague of Andrew Carnegie’s and a driving force in the Carnegie Steel empire. He also became a philanthropist — Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh; Phipps Ocean Park in Palm Beach, Fla.; and the Phipps Houses in New York City still carry the family name.

His conservative values have guided generations of the Phipps family and have assisted in building a horse racing empire as well.

“He had wonderful values and taught his children wonderful values,” said Ogden Mills Phipps, who is known as Dinny and is a great-grandson of Henry Phipps Jr. “With our horse operation, we want to make sure that when the horses get on the track, they are able to run their best.”

Phipps, along with his children, and his first cousin Stuart Janney III own Orb, the 7-2 morning-line favorite for the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

For all the family’s success in horse racing — six generations have been involved in the sport — the Phippses have never stood in the winner’s circle after the sport’s biggest race. With the Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey in their corner, they take their time with their racehorses, preferring to let the horses dictate their pace instead of chasing Derby glory.

Still, when the Phipps family does make it to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, as it did with the second-place finisher Easy Goer in 1989, it cannot help letting the excitement take hold.

“I’m not going to say I have Derby fever,” Dinny Phipps said. “But it’s a great race, and it’s a race that I would love to win.”

McGaughey said, “I know they say they don’t have Derby fever, but I can tell from their phone calls and their communication that they are very excited.”

Orb, who has won four straight races, including the Florida Derby on March 30, is set to become the first Derby starter for McGaughey and the Phippses since Saarland finished 10th in 2002, and their seventh over all. Weather could be a significant factor in the mile-and-a-quarter race Saturday, with a 90 percent chance of rain in the forecast. Orb has never run on a wet track, but McGaughey remained positive.

“If everything goes right Saturday, I think we have a tremendous opportunity to win,” he said. Of the Phipps family, he said: “They don’t interfere. It’s our ballgame, and we all know if we mess up, we’ll be looking for jobs, and we don’t want to be looking for jobs.”

One of Orb’s biggest challengers will be Verrazano, who won the Wood Memorial on April 6 to push his record to 4-0. Verrazano’s main ownership group, Let’s Go Stable, is run by the New Jersey residents Kevin Scatuorchio and Bryan Sullivan, and it is about as blue-collar an outfit as you can get in the rich world of racehorse ownership.

“We have two completely different backgrounds, but the same goal,” Sullivan said. “I have woken up every day for the last 10 to 15 years thinking about winning the Derby. You have to come with the right horse, and I think we both think we have the right horse, and I guess we’ll find out on Saturday.”

Scatuorchio, whose father, James, is a longtime owner, has been wearing a Yankees cap and cowboy boots on the backside all week, smiling from ear to ear, and has been willing to talk to anyone who wants to know about his undefeated colt. Verrazano was expected to be the morning-line favorite until Orb ran away with that honor after a blazing work Monday.

Scatuorchio came up with the name Verrazano after passing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on a ferry ride from Manhattan to his home in Red Bank, N.J. The connection to the bridge grew when his fiancée, Meghan Ehmann, who was in Chicago at the time, was set to run in the New York City Marathon and he sent her a picture of where she would start the race. She framed it for Scatuorchio, and he looks at it every day, thinking of her, and of his colt’s whirlwind sprint to the Kentucky Derby.

Staten Island and Brooklyn, which are connected by the bridge, have developed a fondness for Verrazano. Scatuorchio said he had overheard people discuss Verrazano on the ferry, and Sullivan said he recently found himself making detours to drive over the bridge.

“If we can get lucky, and we can win on Saturday, we would like for people to embrace him and make him their own,” Scatuorchio said.

Luck aside, Scatuorchio and Sullivan think they have a horse who can become the first Derby winner since 1882 who did not race as a 2-year-old. “We feel like we are coming into this race with a horse that’s been doing exceptionally well,” Sullivan said. “We constantly try to evaluate our horses, and with him, we never had to worry about if he could take the next step.”

The Phipps clan, whose historic Westbury House on Long Island could almost be part of the “Downton Abbey” set, feels the same about its colt and his regal bloodlines.

“It’s obviously very exciting, how far this horse has come, and you really do have good horse on your hands,” Janney said. “That’s what you try to do in this business. His development has been pretty spectacular.”

He credited McGaughey for the colt’s transformation into a racehorse peaking at the right time.

“To some extent, I think he’s as good at that as I’ve ever seen, and his ability to observe a horse and understand what the horse wants to do is extraordinary,” Janney said. “The other thing, he’s got a certain advantage; he’s trained, for me, four or five generations of horses. He trained Orb’s mother, Orb’s grandmother and great-grandmother.

“Horses are like people, their characteristics. If you understand what those characteristics are in particular families, I think you end up more than likely doing the right thing.”

Janney and Dinny Phipps know something about family. Janney took over for Phipps as chairman of the family’s Bessemer Trust in 1994 and is vice chairman of the Jockey Club. Phipps is a member of its board of directors and was its chairman. Both have relied on the wisdom of their great-grandfather.

“You don’t really change your way of doing business,” Janney said. “On one hand, you’re talking about horses, and the other hand, you’re talking about companies, people, clients and other kinds of things. I’m not smart enough to change the way I do those things.

“I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about what Henry Phipps tried to do in setting up these companies many years ago, and tried to act in a way that was consistent with what he was trying to do.”